Wednesday, December 31, 2014

Manifesto of Hope

I don't think anyone still reads this blog, but in the off chance that someone does, here's something.

We're in a very shitty situation right now as a species. People are acting out, out of greed, fear, and absolute delusion. Here in the US, especially in metropolitan areas, we've become completely estranged from our neighbors. We're confused. We don't know how to quench our thirst for happiness, comfort, love, and security. We have ideas and we're experimenting, but we're not sure. Something seems off.

Corruption is rampant. Private corporations have managed to infiltrate our healthcare systems, financial systems, education systems, legal systems, and political systems. They've trampled the environment and its inhabitants. They've managed to systematically drain the people of their resources, their intelligence, and their hope. Lobbying is a euphemism for bribery. The corruption is now systemic, reinforced by politicians and laws that have both been sponsored by the corporate entities they serve.

Overseas, the situation has become even more chaotic that dangerous. In Africa, intolerance and disease, In Europe and the Middle East, the rise of fundamentalism and all the militant responses it engenders. In Russia, an imperialistic posture threatens to destabilize the region and perhaps the rest of the world.

It feels like everything is burning down, and when we try to make a change, we experience gridlock. Resistance. There's too much to fix, and all the channels needed to fix it are already corrupted. It's like trying to fix a pipe with a broken wrench.

And yet, there's a hope. There's a hope that our generation, inspired by our personal values and compassion, will wake up, band together, and force change, not through violence, but through our intelligence and ingenuity. Touching hearts, touching minds, touching the humanity in our neighbors and our enemies. Finding our moral backbone and courage, we set on a path, determined to flush the organs of society of their toxic elements. We start to build a new society with new systems and traditions. We follow in the footsteps of our Founding Fathers, who also saw the need to create an alternative to the injustice they experienced.

Words and ideas are not enough. It's time for us to unite and take action to create a society we know in our hearts and minds is balanced, good, and just. We can't just wait for someone else to start. We need to be the start--the spark. Others will join because they know, deep down, that the world is sick and needs healing. What will I do? What will you do? What will we do?